Check out the numbers on that chart. Stat porn! That's what it is. Keep your hands above the keyboard! Only Yordan Alvarez - a great DH from Houston - comes close to Rice's beautistics.
So, of course, we wonder:
Will the Yankees Bloomberg him?
I refer you to the great, bittersweet Ron Bloomberg, history's first DH, a Yankee top draft pick, who flirted with .400 at times during the 1970s, while the Yankee front office systematically turned him into half a player.
The brain trust platooned Bloomberg, even in the minors, ensuring that he would flail at lefty pitchers, and leave Yank fans forever wondering what coulda, mighta, been? As it was, he finished an eight-year career with a respectable lifetime BA of .293. Also, he married a girl from Elmira. (Anybody deserves points for that.)
But this is about Ben Rice, another lefty bat who has invigorated the Yankiverse.
Please, please, please... tell me the Yankees won't Bloomberg this guy.
Because they might.
Late this winter, the Yankees signed Paul Goldschmidt - a veteran, stand-up guy and possible future Hall of Famer. His role: To platoon with Rice at 1B and, thus, keep the young player from becoming what he might be.
Listen: Goldschmidt is a quality human being. Any other player with his credentials - and there are few - could be publicly demanding more playing time. Goldschmidt wants a ring, and let's hope the Yankees take up his challenge, when the August trade deadline balloons the budget.
Meanwhile, Rice has done his share.
Against RH pitchers, he is currently hitting .333. with 5 HRs.
Against lefties, where the Yankees limit his chances, he is batting .353 with 3 HRs.
Damn. He needs to play. Every day. And not just until he cools off.
The Yankees are reaching a crisis point with young hitters. Last year, Jasson Dominguez - aka The Martiain - finished at .257, a BA that, considering the carnage of modern free swingers, was hardly reason for him to be disappeared to Scranton. But that's what happened. The Yankees decided he can't hit lefties, so Dominguez was shipped out, and unless somebody in the OF gets hurt, Dominguez might waste another season at Triple A. Not many teams in baseball would let a prospect with the ceiling of Dominguez languish in the minors, where he is currently hitting .309.
Ben Rice has earned the right to play every day, even if it means displacing two borderline candidates for Cooperstown - Goldschmidt and Giancarlo Stanton. And I'm not talking about putting him at catcher, where he'll just get beaten up.
Rice is the future of the Yankees. Keep playing him, dammit.
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17 comments:
GoldBond-Schmidt couldn’t even catch the ball yesterday with much consistency.
Hopefully the bestest minds make the righteous decisions there at CashCo.
AA, surely you jest. If there's a stupid move to be made, CashCo will make it.
Of course I Jest, JM.
The CashCo ClownCar will repeatedly crash and I have little trust in their BrianTrust.
Remember that the uh, uhm, like, you know - Manager makes up the lineup.
Penthouse perfection
But what goes on
What do they to do there ?
Get him some reps at 3B...
Ah, Duque, but that's just it. Yankee management doesn't even want their young players to develop. For whatever reasons they have in their diseased minds.
After the game yesterday, when Boone did his press conference, and the questions turned to Rice, I swear it seemed to me that Boone didn't sound very happy about Rice playing (hitting) well. Anyone else notice that? So Boone is in on it too, I guess. Well, he has to be, right?
Do you think? Is it the Dopey Manager, Genius GM, Mike The Putz Fishman or all three. The Yankees do not get it. Spencer Jones and Dominguez are wasting away at Scranton. Instead, the Yankees have under .200 Spent Grisham. Yes, he hits an occasional big homer.
Yeah, and that's why, even if they make the playoffs this year, they'll get their butts handed to them in the first round or two. Again. Guys like Trent Grisham, Randal Grichuk won't make them into champions. Not a knock on Grisham. Just a judgment call: he's not good enough to be a starter. Probably a 5th outfielder on a championship club.
Great piece, Peerless Leader. Funny, I saw Blomberg play the OF in Fenway, in 1971. He played right, had 2 putouts and no errors, and went 3-4 with a double and a walk. I always thought afterwards, why didn't they give him a shot there?
Looking it up just now, though, I found out that Bill Virdon actually tried to give Blomberg a shot playing lefties, in 1974. He wasn't bad, hitting .276! And the Yanks gave him other shots in the OF. Virdon said he was going to try playing him more regularly.
Trouble was the injuries. The very next spring, 1975, The Hebrew Hammer started getting hurt—especially playing the OF. Terrible, repeated injuries to his shoulder and legs. At least the ChiSox gave him a big contract (for the time—$600,000), before he was done (and in that role, he hit a 9th-inning homer that helped them beat the BoSox, in 1977).
Very much a bummer.
Other players chosen after Blomberg in the first round of that 1967 draft included Jon Matlack, John Mayberry, Ted Simmons, and Bobby Grich. Intriguing to think how different the Yanks might have been, had they taken any of those guys instead.
At least keep playing him every day while he’s hot.
In case you hadn’t noticed, Goldschmidt is pretty much cooked. Another $12M well spent.
I conservatively predicted Rice would hit 27 home runs. I already see my folly. Go Ben!
I never want to hear Hal whine again about payroll. Not when his resident 'genius' wasted $75,650,000 on these 5 pieces of dead wood:
Trent Grisham 22.05M
Ryan McMahon 16M
Camilo Doval 6.1M
Randall Grichuk 2.5M
Giancarlo Stanton 29,000,000
Throw in another $4 million for insurance from Goldschmidt LLC that wasn't needed (since Belanger and Judge can fill in at 1st) and Yankee payroll costs are the sum of very expensive, boneheaded decisions by Cashman and enabled by Hal.
Meanwhile, Spencer, the Martian, Oswaldo and others are rotting away in Scranton. Hal's already on the hook for $1.2 million for Oswaldo, whether he gets buried or promoted. 4 more guys from AAA would cost him $3.12M and all could probably do a better job. Hal's payroll would be about $265M not $337M.
The Yankee leadership have nobody to blame but themselves. But let's start with Hal and Pal.
Rice might not get to 30 HR, simply because they will play Goldschmidt more. As Rice gets better, look for increased playing time for Goldschmidt, more bench time for Rice.
The dead wood that they have, I think that's the way they want it. That's the point of it all. They like having a huge payroll, but mostly with dead wood. They have a very strong aversion to developing young players, perhaps because of risk management, perhaps in order to keep young players under team control for the maximum time. There could be many reasons for it.
As a sometime visitor to this blog, it strikes me that the posts above describe the NYY braintrust -- charitably -- as freakin' out of their collective mind.
Does this happen one at a time? Or duya think it's started by a group grope?
It started with secret Masonic handshakes. Then they all drank copious amounts of MAGA Kool Aid, got addicted and it's all been downhill ever since.
I think they are working the prediction markets to drive up hopes for the team, only to make a killing when they don't. Rice is the bait.
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